The Oliver E. Williamson Seminar on Institutional Analysis, named after our esteemed colleague who founded the seminar, features current research by faculty, from UCB and elsewhere, and by advanced doctoral students. The research investigates governance and its links with economic and political forces. Markets, hierarchies, hybrids, and the supporting institutions of law and politics all come under scrutiny in the seminar. Over the years, the seminar has contributed to pushing the frontier of knowledge on governance, and on the norms and institutions that lead to societal success or failure.

The OEW Seminar meets on Thursdays from 12:00 – 1:30 pm in room C325 Cheit Hall. Outside speakers normally meet with interested students from 3:00 – 3:45 pm in room F589 (in the Faculty Wing of the Haas School).

To see past OEW Seminars, go to the archive.
To see the current OEW Seminar schedule click here.

Spring 2019 Schedule
Date Speaker Title of Talk/Paper
January 31
 John Morgan (Haas) A Model of Voluntary Managerial Disclosure
February 7
Phil Haile (Yale)
 Common Values, Unobserved Heterogeneity, and Endogenous Entry in U.S. Offshore Oil Lease Auctions
February 14
Zoe Cullen (Harvard Business School)
 Schmoozing: Socializing and Success at Work
February 21 Joseph Shapiro (UC Berkeley) The Environmental Bias of Trade Policy
February 28 Conrad Miller (Haas) Big Push Policies and Firm-Level Barriers to Employing Women: Evidence from Saudi Arabia
March 7
 John Horton (NYU Stern) Buyer Signaling Improves Matching: Evidence from a Field Experiment
March 14 Joe Altonji (Yale) The Labor Market Returns to Advanced Degrees
March 21 Matt Gentzkow (Stanford) The Welfare Effects of Social Media
March 28
Spring Break
April 4
Jeff Weaver (USC)
 The Effects of Parental and Sibling Incarceration: Evidence from Ohio
April 11
Ray Fisman (Boston University)
 Experience of Communal Conflicts and Inter-group Lending
April 18
Gabriel Ulyssea (Oxford)
 Formal and Informal Firm Dynamics
April 22
Oriana Bandiera (LSE)
 The Allocation of Authority in Organizations: A Field Experiment with Bureaucrats
May 2
Aloysius Siow (University of Toronto)
 Quality, Variety and Quantity from the Industrial Revolution to the Digital Revolution
May 9
Emily Breza (Harvard)
 Testing for Labor Rationing: Revealed Preference Estimates from Hiring Shocks
Fall 2018 Schedule
Date Speaker Title of Talk/Paper
August 30
 Steve Tadelis (Haas) Sequential Bargaining in the Field: Evidence from Millions of Online Bargaining Interactions
September 6
Xavier Jaravel (LSE)
 What are the Price Effects of Trade? Evidence from the U.S. and Implications for Quantitative Trade Models
September 13
Chad Syverson (Booth)
 How Wide Is the Firm Border?
September 20
Abhay Aneja (Job market mock talk)
 The Effect of Political Power on Labor Market Inequality: Evidence from the 1965 Voting Rights Act
September 27 Laura Boudreau (Job market mock talk) Supply chain enforcement of labor law: Experimental evidence from Bangladesh’s apparel sector
October 4
 Ruixue Jia (UC San Diego) The Oriental City? Political Hierarchy and Regional Development in China, AD1000-2000
October 11 Hyo Kang (Job market mock talk) How Does Competition Affect Innovation? Evidence from U.S. Antitrust Cases
October 18 Thomas Fujiwara (Princeton) Norms in Bargaining: Evidence from Government Formation
October 25
Petra Moser (Stern)
 Effects of Copyrights on Science
November 1
Rebecca Dizon-Ross (Booth)
 Incentivizing Behavioral Change: The Role of Time Preferences
November 8
Nancy Qian (Kellogg)
 The Fluidity of Race: “Passing” in the United States, 1880-1940
November 15
Amit Khandelwal (Columbia GSB)
 Detecting Urban Markets with Satellite Imagery: An Application to India
November 29
Stelios Michalopoulos (Brown)
 Folklore
December 6
Raul Sanchez de la Sierra (Haas)
 The Spillover Effects of Deportation Fear: Evidence from Secure Communities